Using the ISS

Click the arrow to watch the video. The event ran one hour forty minutes.

The Senate Committee on Science, Space and Transportation held a meeting on July 25 titled, "The International Space Station: A Platform for Research, Collaboration, and Discovery."

Although the committee has 25 members only four attended — Bill Nelson (D-FL), John Boozman (R-AR), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL). Nelson, Rubio and Hutchison represent states with space centers and NASA contractors.

Aviation Week reported on the event:

Don Pettit, who returned from his second stint on the ISS July 1 after 193 days in orbit, says U.S.-side crewmembers are averaging about 6.5 hr. per day of research time. Overall the U.S.-side crew is posting 35 hr. per week of research as counted by NASA’s ISS program office at Johnson Space Center.

“Currently crewmembers are working 13 or 14 hours a day, and out of that we can get about 6.5 hours of mission programmatic work done,” Pettit told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation July 25. “That’s because we’re in a harsh frontier, and we spend 13 or 14 hours a day just to keep the machinery going and keep it possible for human beings to be there. You’ll find this is commensurate with other frontiers that are harsh on the surface of Earth.”